Teens asking hard questions on diversity

Bernice Yeung, OF THE EXAMINER STAFF

Published 4:00 am, Monday, May 4, 1998

1998-05-04 04:00:00 PDT SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA -- Hoping to stem the rising tide of racial and ethnic tensions on their campuses, Bay Area high school students from the East Bay to Marin have declared war on hate.

In the wake of a series of incidents that included slurs against minority athletes and hate graffiti on campus, students at San Marin High School in Novato met with their contemporaries from Mill Valley's Tamalpais High for a discussion on race and ethnic issues last Thursday.

The event was San Marin's latest student-led effort to confront multicultural issues in schools. Two clubs, Diversity Core Group and Other People's Cultures, were formed more than a year ago to address race-related issues.

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The two schools are not alone in their efforts to address diversity's tough questions. In the East Bay, 50 students from five high schools are making themselves heard through Youth Together, a program that asks the teens to develop their own strategies for fighting racism.

In the South Bay, the San Jose Unified School District brought in Todos, an Oakland-based program that holds diversity retreats attended by students and staff.

"You can't just move away from the problem; you've got to solve it," said Liz Rodriguez, a Richmond High School senior and a member of Youth Together. "That's why I'm in this group."

In Novato last week, police posted a $1,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of a vandal who painted racist graffiti at San Marin High. A swastika was found last Monday on an art class chair.

The wave of graffiti came on the heels of a February incident in which racial epithets were hurled at visiting Tam High basketball players by San Marin students.

Citing negative experiences with the press, students declined comment about the incidents or their meeting last Thursday. The meeting was closed to the media.

Sensitivity training

Last year, Diversity Core Group invited the Oakland Men's Project to bring its three-day sensitivity training course, "Days of Respect," to campus. Other People's Cultures, a club that meets at lunch time nearly every week, takes its "Building Bridges" workshop to Marin County middle schools. Through "Building Bridges," freshmen and sophomores discuss ethnic and racial diversity issues with students only a few years younger than they are.

In the East Bay, Oakland's Youth Together - developed to address the cause of racial and ethnic conflict - works with students from Skyline, Berkeley, Richmond, Castlemont and Fremont high schools. In its pilot year, Youth Together passed out 2,451 surveys in East Bay high schools. The surveys showed 95 percent of the respondents believed racial problems existed in their school.

While many violence-prevention programs rely on punitive measures like expulsion, suspension and incarceration, Youth Together turns to the students themselves.

"We are trying to develop leadership to address the institutional roots of violence across races," said project director Margaretta Lin, a former civil rights lawyer. "Schools only target the symptoms - fighting - and there's no capacity to go deeper. We need to ask, "Why are they fighting?' "

Stuck between gangs

For Liz Rodriguez, a member of the Richmond High Youth Together team, violence is nothing new. She lives in a corner house between two gang neighborhoods.

When she was 6, someone shot at her shadow in the window, the bullet whizzing over her head and hitting the cookie jar behind her. She said she was too young to know what had happened and just went back to bed. Her parents found the bullet in the house the next day.

Today, she is still afraid to walk in the front of her living room for fear of being hit in the next drive-by shooting.

"I duck and run to the kitchen and then run back," said Rodriguez, 17.

Rodriguez, who plans to attend Contra Costa College next fall, isn't ducking the issues behind the violence, however.

"My mom wants to move out of our neighborhood, but the violence will just follow us," Rodriguez said. "I can't see walking away from a problem."

Youth Together students like Rodriguez must maintain at least a 2.0 GPA and devote a minimum of five hours a week to the project. The students also have to treat Youth Together like a job because they are paid, although they would not say how much.

Team members also practice what they promote. Nobody on the Richmond team has been in a fight since joining Youth Together, they said.

"In Youth Together, I learned to talk to people better," said Richmond High sophomore Pao Saechao. "I learned violence prevention and conflict mediation. I haven't fought anyone in a long time."

"They teach you how to express your feelings," added sophomore Shari Carr. "A lot of times, you ask people what they're fighting about and people don't even know. The problem would have been resolved if they had just talked about it."

Through Youth Together, student teams have gone classroom to classroom to discuss racial violence. They have called for discussions about increasing ethnic and racial sensitivity between students and school authorities. They have lobbied for ethnic studies, which Youth Together feels would eliminate the tension that spawns conflict. They have written articles about the pain and pointlessness of violence for the Oakland Post's bi-monthly "Conscious Seed" page, published exclusively for Youth Together.

"More peace'&lt;

In addition to helping youths organize efforts to combat racism, Youth Together mentors teach their own culture-conscious curriculum to students during weekly meetings and monthly regional workshops.

"If the general public knew what I know from Youth Together, it would be different," said Sharon Louisell, a Berkeley High junior. "There would be more peace."

The Youth Together pilot program was initiated in 1997 by Oakland's Art, Research and Curriculum Associates, and is funded by the Hate Crimes Initiative of the U.S. Department of Education. The project, which recently received a $1.5 million three-year grant, is a partnership with the East Bay Asian Youth Center, International Institute of the East Bay, West Oakland Health Council and the Xicana Moratorium Coalition.

David Kakishiba, director of the East Bay Asian Youth Center, said few schools empower students to solve the problem, which is the reason racial violence persists in schools.

"To create change in a school, strategies have got to come from the students," Kakishiba said.

"The administrators are trying to do their job," conceded 16-year-old Richmond High student Jovan Walker.

"But they should give us more respect and listen to our side. That could go a long way." &lt;